Driving Around

As Suffolk County residents will say, should we take the ferries between Suffolk and New England, or should we “drive around”? The “drive around” involves navigating the web of roads and bridges to our far west.

And that can be quite a trip, as I learned last week, with that ferocious nor’easter hitting us and causing cancellations of service on both the Cross Sound Ferry between Orient Point and New London, and the Port Jefferson-Bridgeport ferry.

We were taking a little vacation in southern Vermont — in the lovely town of Landgrove, a kind of Brigadoon in Vermont — and suddenly needed to get back to Suffolk County. But with the ferries not running due to the intense gusts riling the Long Island Sound, the only choice was “going around.”

And what a six-hour trip!

Now, I don’t mean in this column to advocate the long-contested call for a bridge across the waters to our north, in addition to the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge and Throgs Neck Bridge on the far west of geographic Long Island.

I grew up in Queens and remember well what once was a bucolic island in New York City, Staten Island, on which my Boy Scout troop would regularly go camping. That became a memory after Robert Moses built the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge cutting apart Staten Island and making it largely a runway to and from New Jersey. But …

As I was stuck in traffic, in the choice of “going around,” dealing with a web of highways before finally getting to the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge, I thought of what I had originally slated to write this column about: a renewal of the call for highways as substitutes for the ferries that usually, and in a most relaxing way, cross the Long Island Sound.

I planned to focus on a prominent Connecticut housing developer, Stephen A. Shapiro of Easton, calling last month for a 14-mile bridge from western Suffolk County, between the northern terminus of Sunken Meadow State Parkway in the Town of Smithtown, and Interstate 95 in Bridgeport. As he told News 12 Connecticut: “It would cut down severely on travel time from Long Island to Connecticut, making the trip from three hours down to 20 minutes.”

He projected the cost at $50 billion and said the bridge should be federally financed.

Shapiro’s “idea is catching the eyes of some lawmakers as well,” wrote Brian Gioiele, editor of the Connecticut newspapers Shelton Herald and Milford Mirror. He quoted Connecticut State Representative Joe Hoxha saying: “A project that can bring in revenue and that will lower taxes, bring jobs and economic growth, as well as protect American lives in the event of a natural disaster, should be welcomed with open arms.”

And I planned to write about the proposals for a bridge across the water from Suffolk or Nassau counties not being new. Or a tunnel for that matter.

In 1938, U.S. Senator Royal Copeland of upstate Suffern proposed an 18-mile bridge from Orient Point, crossing Plum, Gull and Fishers islands, with a landing in either Groton, Connecticut, or Watch Hill, Rhode Island. It never happened.

And, in 1964, New York public works czar Robert Moses and Governor Nelson Rockefeller commissioned a feasibility study of a 6.1-mile-long bridge from Oyster Bay in Nassau County to Rye in Westchester County. There was strong opposition in both communities, and no bridge was built.

Then, in 1972, the New York State Department of Transportation, in cooperation with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and Federal Highway Administration, released a draft environmental impact statement considering several Long Island Sound crossings, including bridges between Syosset and Rye, Sands Point and New Rochelle, and Port Jefferson and Bridgeport. A tunnel also was studied and deemed financially prohibitive.

In 1979, Governor Hugh Carey commissioned a study of, again, several Long Island Sound crossing routes. But state planners concluded that existing ferry services were preferable, citing the high costs of any of the bridge proposals.

In 2008, Vincent Polimeni of Garden City-based Polimeni International, developers of commercial properties worldwide, proposed a privately financed toll tunnel — with a $25 toll each way — between, again, Oyster Bay and Rye. It had a projected cost of $10 billion and a design by an engineering firm that worked on the Channel Tunnel between England and France (commonly called the “Chunnel”). It got nowhere.

And in 2016, Governor Andrew Cuomo launched a feasibility study for, once more, a crossing between Rye and Oyster Bay. It determined that an 18-mile tunnel, at a cost of between $31 billion and $55 billion, was the most viable option, but it was shelved in the face of, once again, opposition in the affected communities.

So, it has gone — or hasn’t gone. Public comments on the website Reddit about the newest bridge scheme, Shapiro’s, are, as usual, mixed. Said one person: “It would be easier to build a Japan-South Korea tunnel … NIMBYs too strong on both sides.”

Said another: “Because this would be incredibly convenient for me, I know that it will never happen.”

Another: “Sunken Meadow State Park should be protected. Eminent domain a few mansions, pay them market [price] and preserve parks.”

Another: “Please, as a LIer with family in CT, I beg someone to build the bridge.”

Another: “It would officially finish off Long Island. How about more ferry access points?”

And another: “Despite the fact this very well could give me a job right out of college (I’m studying to be a civil engineer), I do not like this at all. I happen to like my (relatively) low-traffic area in Mount Sinai. Also, the cost, environmental impacts, NIMBY opposition, structural requirements (which compound with length and variance in the Sound bed), and traffic implications are enough of a reason for me to be opposed. I am, however, in favor of subsidizing ferry tickets and possible expansions to other North Shore ports.”

Yet another: “The majority of Long Island would rather sit in traffic or take the ferry than want more people or business on Long Island. This would turn Long Island into Queens.”

In any event, beware of “driving around.”